E.T. Print Home: Remote Printing with Windows XP

You'd like to print a document to your remote printer but you can't, because, well, you aren't there! You don't need an expensive machine running Windows 2003 Server to print documents away from home. Let Kulvir Bhogal show you how to set up Windows XP as a VPN server and you'll be printing remotely in no time!

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Imagine being at work or away from your home computer. You would like to
print a document to your remote printer but you can't, because, well, you
aren't there! To be able to print remotely, you might think you need a
machine running a server-flavored version of Windows, like Windows 2003 Server
or something that is way beyond your budget. Contrary to popular belief, you can
set up Windows XP as a VPN server, thereby giving you access to your printers
back home. In this article, I'll show you how to do just that.

Creating Your Windows XP VPN Server

You'll start out by preparing your home Windows XP machine to act as a
VPN server.

Since you're trying to share your printer over the Internet, we need to
make sure it's shared. If you don't already have a printer shared on
your home network, go to your Control Panel and double-click on the Printers and
Faxes icon. In the subsequent Printers and Faxes folder, right-click on the icon
for the printer that you want to share over the Internet through your VPN.
Choose the "Sharing..." context option. Then, click on the Sharing tab
and choose the "Share this printer" option. Finally, provide a Share
name for your printer. The Share name represents the name you want displayed on
other computers in your network. Go ahead and click OK to finish up the sharing
process.

At this point, the printer resource you decided to share should be shown in
your Printers and Faxes folder with a hand holding the printer resource. Before
trying to share your printer through your VPN though, I would suggest that you
make sure that your printer is shared properly in your local network, by first
sharing it with another machine in your local network. Before I move forward,
I'll take it for granted that you have this done.

I am also going to assume that you have a static broadband connection at home
and that your broadband service provides you with a static IP address. If you
don't have a static IP address, you might want to consider using a dynamic
DNS service like the one offered by ZoneEdit.com.

I am going to also assume that you're familiar with how to forward ports
on your broadband router, if you use one.

To connect to the VPN server from the internet, you will need to forward port
1723 to the static IP address of your Windows XP machine. Some routers show a
setting called PPTP Pass Through, and if your router has such an option, you
must enable it. If you're running Windows XP Service Pack 2, you'll
also need to make sure that the Windows Firewall allows for an Incoming
Connection VPN (PPTP) on port 1723.

To prepare your Windows XP machine as a VPN server, double-click on the
Network Connections icon in your Control Panel. From there, choose the
File-->New Connection... option. In the subsequent New Connection Wizard
(shown in Figure 1), click Next.

In the subsequent screen, you need to specify the "Allow virtual private
connections" option. Doing so will tell Windows to modify the Internet
Connection Firewall on the machine to allow for an incoming VPN connection,
thereby allowing your remote box to tunnel into your home machine.

In the following User Permissions screen, you need to pick the user accounts
that you want to be able to use with your home network resources (for example,
your home printer) over the Internet. It's important to remember here that
you need to make sure that the user account you'll be using on your remote
workstation is given the permission to connect to your VPN server. If you need
to, at this point you can use the Add button to Add another account. In Figure
6, I specified that I want the user Bicky to be able to connect to my VPN
server.

In the subsequent Networking Software screen, make sure the "File and
Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" option is checked. This is because
you need for the Printer sharing to be enabled to access your printer through
your VPN. Next, choose the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option and click on
Properties.

Figure 7 Making Sure
the File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks is Checked and Opening the
TCP/IP Properties

Check to see that the "Allow callers to access my local network"
option is checked and that the "Specify TCP/IP addresses" option is
chosen under the "TCIP/IP address assignment" area. You'll also
need to specify a range of IP addresses for incoming VPN connections. An easy
way to figure out a valid range of TCP/IP addresses is to use the IPCONFIG
utility of DOS and see the IP address that your router assigns to your machine.
For example, my router gives my networked machines a 192.168.0.Y address.
Accordingly, I went ahead and specified a range of 192.168.0.200 to
192.168.0.210, thereby allowing for 11 possible incoming VPN connections, as
shown in Figure 8.